On Organization & Process

"The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious." — Marcus Aurelius

On Organization and Process

Organization is an important function of business.

The processes of streamlining things like institutional knowledge, physical work space, raw organizational habits, corporate values or guiding non-negotiables is necessary for growth and setting your team up to win. We often see this organization arrive in the form of documents, decision trees, manifestos, books, processes and policies. Yet sometimes we resent policy or authority or process or structure. We maybe label them suffocating or hindering or superfluous middle management fodder.

Our lead partner, self-proclaimedly, loves to parachute into chaos and make sense of the mess, God bless 'im. And business is often (read: almost always) messy. If it’s not one thing, it’s the other. The wild energy required to start and grow a business is, by its very nature, rooted in hustle, grit, and chutzpa (and, of course, copious amounts of organic coffee). This zeal and the resulting growth produces various forms of disarray if left unprocessed or mishandled.

During the start of an organization, the culture and the way things get done almost always come together organically. Mainly, because they must. Yet, in order to “keep the kite in the air,” organization and streamlining must take place.

The intangibles which get the kite into the air, must be captured for the sake of sustainability (i.e. "keeping it in the air”). The process of growing naturally results in entropy and decay if not tended to. Thus diligent tending must take place.

A Springboard to the Highest Good

It would be misplaced to perceive this act of organizing—this tending—as dehumanizing or in any way suffocating to creativity. As my good friend Curtis Powell taught me, the purpose of any policy or manual is (read: should be) to springboard your team to the highest good. And in turn, systematically and systemically create raving fans of the work you’re doing.

But leaders must be diligent to craft these organizational byproducts to preserve (not to stifle) creativity; to foster (not rob) autonomy. To create room for good things to run wild. To capture the “who" you are and “what" you do in a way that makes each repeatable and sustainable as you grow, turn over, pivot, shift and develop. These procedures, processes and checklist give you meaningful data points along your history from which leadership can learn from and iterate upon.

"As your project and your organization develop over time, randomness and unpredictability occurs. Entropy is a force of nature... over time, stuff gets more scrambled, not more orderly. Things decay. Left alone, just about anything we create fades to mediocrity or instability.

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ipso exists to help humans flourish. Our humans. Your humans. Collectively…every human. To help us, all of us, flourish. While our work is in the realm of design, programming, video, and content creation, those things are simply what we do in order to tangibly serve others. Underneath all of that work is foundational belief that business exists for the common good, the flourishing of individuals and communities. Give us a call (330) 541-5448 or complete the info form here.

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